OF THE KERI AND KETIB. 401
the tradition they had received. What weight is to be laid upon such a tradition for near a thousand years (above, according to Mo- rinus) is easily to be imagined. Nor let men please themselves with the pretended facility of learning the Hebrew language without points and accents ; and not only the language, but the true and pro- per reading and distinction of it in the Bible. Let the points and accents be wholly removed, and all apprehensions of the sense aris- ing by the restraint and distinction of the words as now pointed, and then turn in the drove of the learned critics of this age upon the naked consonants, and we shall quickly see what woful work, yea, havoc of sacred truth, will be made amongst them. Were they shut up in several cells, I should scarcely expect the harmony and agree- ment amongst them which is faljulously reported to have been in the like case among the LXX. The Jews say, and that truly, ns \i>''ii D'-T' i6 Tip:i5n nii.'\pn !?j; ijid'^, — "No man can lift up his tongue to read without punctuation." And, " Si rationi in his et similibus domi- nium concedamus, toti mutabuntur libri, in Uteris, vocibus, et sen- tentiis, et sic res ipsa quoque mutabitur," Lib. Cosri. 1, par. 8, p. 28. And thus have I, with all possible brevity, vindicated the position formerly insisted on from this grand exception, which might be justly feared from the principles laid down in the Prolegomena.
CHAPTER VII.
Of the a'^^5^ ''y, their nature and original — The difference is in the conso- nants— Morinus' vain charge on Arias Montanus — The senses of both con- sistent— Of the great congregation — The spring and rise of these various readings — The judgment of the Prolegomena about them — Their order given twice over in the Appendix — The rise assigned to them considered — Of Cap- pellus, his opinion, and the danger of it.
We are not as yet come to a close. There is another thing agi- tated in these Prolegomena, and represented in the Appendix, that may seem to derogate from the universality of my assertion concern- ing the entire preservation of the original copies of the Scripture. The ^''r>?^ ^"!P, or the scriptio and lectio, or scriptum and ledum, is that which I intend. The general nature of these things is known to all them that have looked into the Bible. One word is placed in the line and another in the margin, the word in the line having not the points or vowels aflSxed to it that are its own, but those that be- long to the word in the margin. Of this sort there are in the Bible eio-ht hundred and forty, or thereabout; for some of the late editions, by mistake or oversight, do differ in the precise number. All men that have wrote any considerations on the Hebrew text have spoken of their nature in general; so hath the author of these Prolegomena.
VOL. XVI. 26
402 INTEGRITY AND PURITY OF THE HEBREW AND GREEK TEXT.
As to our present concernment, — namely, to manifest that from them no argument can arise as to the corruption of the original, — the ensu- ing observations concerning them may suffice : —
1. All the difference in these words is in the consonants, not at all in the vowels. The word in the margin owns the vowels in the line as proper to it, and the vowels in the line seem to be placed to the word whereunto they do not belong, because there is no other meet place for them in the line Avhere they are to be continued, as belonging to the integrity of the Scripture.
Morinus, to manifest his rage against the Hebrew text, takes from hence occasion to quarrel with Arias Montanus, and to accuse him of ignorance and false dealing, De Heb. Text. Sincer., Exer. i. cap. iv. p. 40-
The pretence of his quarrel he makes to be, that Arias affirms the greatest part of these various lections to consist in some differences of the points; for which purpose he cites his words out of his preface to his collection of various lections : " Maxima in his lectionibus varietatis pars in hujusmodi punctorum discrepantia consistit, ut toto hujus Mazzoreth sive variarum lectionum volumine demonstratur." Whereunto he subjoins, " Mira assertio ! ne una quidem in punctis sita est. Catalogum plurimorum ipse ad finem prgefationis adtexuit. Et varietates omnes sunt in Uteris, nulla in pimctis. Confidentius scribo omnium variarum lectionum quas Judoei appellant ^''^^^^i ni?^ Keri et Ketib, de quibus agit Arias nulla prorsus ad puncta pertinet. Iterum confidentius/' etc. Would not any man think but that the man had made here some great discovery, both as to the nature of the ^''^9'' ''"''?> ^s ^Iso to the ignorance of Arias, whom he goes on to reproach as a person unacquainted with the Masora, and with the various lections of Ben Asher and Ben Naphtali, of the eastern and western Jews, at the end of the Venetian Bibles; which Bibles he chiefly used in the printing of his own? And yet, on the other hand, men acquainted with the ability and great discerning of Arias will be hardly persuaded that he was so blind and ignorant as to affirm the greatest part of the variety he spoke of consisted in the changing of vowels, and immediately to give instances wherein all he men- tions consists in the change of consonants only. But what if all this should prove the ignorance and prejudice of Morinus? First, To his redoubled assertion about the difference of the Keri and Ketib in the consonants only, — wherein he speaks as though he were blessing the world with a new and strange discovery, — it is a thing known "lippis et tonsoribus," and hath been so since the days of EHas Levita. What then? Intended Arias Montanus to affirm the contrary? « Hie nigri succus loliginis : hsec est iErugo mera."